Thursday, March 22, 2007

In the northwest corner of Dakota, I saw a roomsomeone had left, a plush sofa returning its button-eyed stare to the glance she gave it over her shoulder,the dog, too, turning. In the next room, the mattress,with mattress stories one after another tumblingout of each spring, the window she opened first thing,its vista of mile after mile, and the windmill haulingits load. I saw that, and nothing alive—

green oil-figured linoleum laid on counters,nails of bad craft, the ripped blackening edgethat scared her more than the bed and the soundof the windmill winning its will from the aquifernight after night, the whack of her blade on the block.There are houses with too many knives sometimes she said,

but when June ferned its way in she'd relent, take on itsrestraint, heave again on the stained sheets her burdenof child, herself a torn girl again, combing her hairthrough fingers bruised by corn shocks, sweet juicein the cuts of her life.

She began to think of the borderand mustangs without brand. At night they'd bendover the bed and nuzzle. One ride was enough.She had sufficient magic to cling to a mane and fareover the windowsill. I see where the curtain felland nobody mended the tear, I see where bare feetmarked like fossils her pass in the rain.

When he uncovers fiddleheads by the spring,why does he always think of that first sightof her thigh in the peach-colored dress, of his hand'ssearching moss with its red-gold stamens, the springin that arid landscape like something from Canaanunder his tongue? Even in old age he'd ponder the moment,lying under the moon forgiving himself, her, the worldthat bred their conundrum, washed in that rain.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

I also, and I admit this, like the word Witch. I agree with Laurie Cabot that it is a "delicious word." I am a Wiccan priestess, and I am a Witch. I feel that "Witch" describes one important aspect of what I do--the part of my practice that has me hanging herbal charms at my doors, adding consecrated oils to my cleaning products, and carving Runes in candles to bring new and beautiful things into my life. None of those things are intrinsic to Wicca as a religion, so I say I am a Witch to help describe what kind of Wiccan I am. That's my approach; as always, your mileage may vary.

I'll also say that I read Triumph of the Moon, just like everyone else, and, in response to the question: Did Uncle Gerald and Aunt Doreen invent something new or did they discover a tradition that goes back to my Neolithic grandmothers? I'll just say: Yes. That is what my cells tell me; they tell me "yes".

I think that, as he so often does, NTodd has called this one just right. We've been in a Constitutional crisis. I think we've been there ever since five justices on the Supreme Court, including those appointed by his father, ordered Florida to stop counting Americans' votes and to selected Bush to be "president." The Constitutional crisis has continued for years, with this illegitimate "president" issuing signing statements saying that he's above the law. With warrantless spying on American citizens coughtheKerrycampaigncough. With an Attorney General disputing the fact that Americans have an inalienable right to habeas corpus. With, as NTodd notes, a rubber-stamp Congress that provided NO oversight of the executive branch of our government. So, like fish who were unaware that they were swimming in water, we've been living in a Constitutional crisis for six years. The difference is, now we know it.

I think that when Bush instructs his staff to be in contempt of Congress, and possibly a district court, he is then in violation of his consitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed and has to be impeached. It's not that the founders didn't forsee this sort of problem and provide a remedy. They did. It's called impeachment.

This plays out and, at the end, either we have something that calls itself America, but isn't, or we have our country back. Either way, it's time. Let's all pray the Dems have the ovaries for this.

Discussing the appalling abdication of duty by the former Republican-controlled Congress, he notes that: Many of the decisions now causing Bush grief could have been made only by a politician who did not believe anyone was looking over his shoulder. It's inconceivable that the administration would have been so cavalier about planning the postwar occupation of Iraq — or so dismissive of the Army warnings that it had not deployed enough troops to ensure order — if it knew that Congress would closely examine its plans.

Likewise, it's difficult to imagine that an administration accustomed to serious scrutiny would have dismissed U.S. attorneys involved in sensitive decisions on whether to prosecute political corruption and fraud cases the way Bush's Justice Department did in December.

Also: Already, tough congressional questioning is forcing Bush to change the way he operates.

In the four months since Democrats won control, perhaps more administration officials linked to failure or ethical missteps — Rumsfeld, officials directly responsible for Walter Reed, the Army secretary, the Justice Department chief of staff — have resigned under fire than during the six years when the GOP majority averted its eyes. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, even after Bush's vote of confidence Tuesday, may be the next to fall to the new breeze.

Tuesday's stormy news conference suggests that Bush will push back against tough oversight. But his presidency might have turned out a lot better if he hadn't spent his first six years virtually immune from it.

You know, the founders instituted a system of three separate, but coequal, branches of government for a reason.

House Panel Examines Efforts by White House to Slant Climate Change Info

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has released a sheaf of documents showing how a former oil industry lobbyist, Philip A. Cooney, worked within the White House to recraft scientific evidence associated with climate change, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times reported today. Wrote the New York Times: "Cooney said the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001. They were the first public statements on the issue by Cooney, the former chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality." Cooney came to the role after serving as climate team leader for the American Petroleum Institute and subsequent to his tenure went to work for Exxon Mobil.

At a congressional hearing, James E. Hansen, the top climate expert at NASA, testified that "editing like that of Mr. Cooney and efforts to limit scientists’ access to the news media and the public amounted to censorship and muddied the public debate over a pressing environmental issue." Hansen was quoted by the N.Y. Times as saying: "If public affairs offices are left under the control of political appointees, it seems to me that inherently they become offices of propaganda."

The L.A. Times called the "open confrontation" between Chairman Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., and the ranking Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., "a rare display of direct debate in otherwise carefully choreographed hearings." Los Angeles Times , New York Times , March 20.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Arise, the damned of the earth,Arise, prisoners of hunger,For reason thunders in its crater,It is the eruption of the end!Let us make a blank slate of the past,Crowds, slaves, arise, arise!The world is changing at the base,We are nothing, let's be everything! |: This is the final struggle Let us gather, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be mankind! :|

There are no supreme saviours,Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.Workers, let's save ourselves!Let's decree universal salvationSo that the thief offers us his throat,To pull the mind out of the dungeonLet us blow upon our furnace ourselves,Strike the iron while it is hot! |: It is the final struggle Let us gather, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be mankind! :|

The state represses and the law cheats,The taxes bleed the unfortunateNo responsibility is imposed on the richThe rights of the poor is a hollow phraseEnough of languishing in custody,Equality needs other laws!No rights without duty, it says,Similarly, no duties without rights. |: It is the final struggle Let us gather, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be mankind! :|

Hideous, in their glory,The kings of the mines and rail.Never have they done anything else,But steal from others' work.In the safes of this groupWhat we created is melted together!In decreeing that they give it backThe people want nothing but their due. |: It is the final struggle Let us gather, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be mankind! :||The kings intoxicate us with their fumes,Peace among ourselves, war to the tyrants!Let us declare strikes in the armies,Guns in the air, break their ranks!If they insist, those cannibals,On making heroes of us,They will soon know that our bullets,Are for our own generals. |: It is the final struggle Let us gather, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be mankind! :|

Labourers, peasants, we areThe great party of workersThe earth belongs only to humansThe idle are going to live elsewhereHow much they feast on our fleshBut if the ravens and vulturesDisappear one of these daysThe sun will shine forever |: It is the final struggle Let us gather, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be mankind! :|

Social psychologists have long studied what happens to groups that exclude contrarian viewpoints, and in the 1970s Irving Janis first coined the term "groupthink" to describe the phenomenon. Two decades later, Philip Tetlock, a professor of organizational behavior and political science at the University of California at Berkeley, analyzed decisions around crucial moments in history, such as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, John F. Kennedy's Bay of Pigs invasion, Richard Nixon's efforts to cover up Watergate, and Lyndon Johnson's escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Tetlock found that leaders who encouraged dissent were more likely to make the right calls compared with those who discouraged dissent. But he found that leaders who welcomed contrary points of view were not guaranteed success -- Jimmy Carter's botched attempt to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran being one example.

Overconfidence is a central problem for policymakers, Tetlock said. Political experts are more confident about their predictions than their track records (and results) warrant.

Tetlock said liberals might be more comfortable than conservatives with the idea of systematically encouraging dissent, but presidential scholar Fred I. Greenstein said his study of chief executives over the past half century showed that the man who best exemplified the encourage-conflicting-views approach was Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Greenstein, the co-author of "How Presidents Test Reality," credited Eisenhower's approach with keeping the United States out of Indochina in the mid-1950s, noting that Democratic presidents pursued the opposite style of decision making a decade later in Vietnam.

"It was the antithesis of cherry-picking points of view," he said of Eisenhower's technique, which included not only finding people who disagreed with the president but also helping them perfect their arguments. "They often had contrasting points of view in parallel columns. They would be for and against encouraging a coup in Guatemala, or engaging in a missile program. The idea was to institutionalize disagreement."

Greenstein said history would have to rank how Bush compares with other presidents in aversion to dissent, but said there is little doubt Bush has hurt himself by shutting out people who disagree with him -- as King Lear also did.

"Shakespeare is one of our great social scientists," Greenstein said.

There is another reason the Lear analogy may be particularly apposite. By the end of the play, with death and disaster all around, Shakespeare makes sure you understand that King Lear's tragedy was not just his own.

Doing agency and appellate law, I often see lawyers who "drink their own kool-aid" -- who let themselves get convinced by their own arguments to the point where they lose their effectiveness. One of the smartest lawyers I know is a guy who is always saying, "Well, what the other side will probably argue is . . . . " It's incredibly helpful to have someone like that in your group. You've got to not only think of what the other side will say in response to your argument, you've got to put yourself in their shoes and see why, from their point of view, their argument is correct. One of the least effective lawyers I know is a guy who is just determined that his arguments are right and that the agency or court will, of course, be swayed by them. He fails to anticipate the other side's arguments (thereby assuring that he'll fail to answer them) because he's sure that they'll fall prostrate at the brilliance of his arguments. Bush thought that the Iraqis would welcome us as liberators. Flowers. Candy. George Bush Boulevard.

This administration has no Cordelia, not even the press which has, at least in the past, played that role for other presidents even when their kitchen cabinets failed to do so. Perhaps the next real question is whether Bush has a Fool -- perhaps, in this case, that's the role the press will play. The Bush junta, where it's explicit that, "You're either for us or you're for the terrorists," has been extremely ineffective in everything except looting the U.S. Treasury. It's sad.

For the love of Lakshmi, xians, get the fuck over it. People have been rubbing fancy bits ever since the dawn of time and will be doing so for the forseeable future. No one cares but you bozos and you don't even know why you care; you just know that you do.

And stop for a minute and contemplate the nature of the "loving god" that these whackjobs worship. He'd "make" a child gay and then consider gay love a sin. It's just unfuckingbelievable the knots into which these people will twist themselves over a complete nonissue. Who cares who sleeps with who?

I have enough treasures from the pastto last me longer than I need or want.you know as welI as I . . . malevolent memorywon't let go of half of them:a modest church, with its gold cupolaslightly askew; a harsh chorusof crows; the whistle of a train;a birch tree haggard in a fieldas if it had just been sprung from jail;a secret midnight conclaveof monumental Bible-oaks;and a tiny rowboat that comes drifting outof somebody's dreams, slowly foundering.Winter has already loitered here,lightly powdering these fileds,casting an impenetrable hazethat fills the world as far as the horizon.i used to think that after we are gone there's nothing, simply nothing at all.Then who's that wandering by the porchagain and calling us by name?Whose face is pressed against the frosted pane?What hand out there is waving like a branch?By way of reply, in that cobwebbed cornera sunstruck tatter dances in the mirror.

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About Me

I'm a woman, a Witch, a mother, a grandmother, an eco-feminist, a gardener, a reader, a writer, and a priestess of the Great Mother Earth. Hecate appears in the
Homeric Ode to Demeter, which tells of Hades who caught Persophone
"up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting. . . . But no one, either of the deathless gods or of mortal men, heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit: only tenderhearted Hecate, bright-coiffed, the daughter of Persaeus, heard the girl from her cave . . . ."